“On their walls (s)he left nothing but hooks, and some wire.”
— How The Grinch Stole Christmas

I knew today was going to be bad, but I didn’t know how much of a relapse it would be.

On returning to the house after vacation, I am sadder than I had been. The last week had been spent with family, out of my empty home where my wife and stepdaughter used to brighten it. It was easy to ignore the situation, but on returning last night, the wife had been back to take everything that was theirs.

I was mystified by some of the things that she took — and didn’t take. She didn’t take anything big that I had wanted to keep… but she took some small things that I didn’t think she’d bother with.

The colorful bottles atop our kitchen cabinets were gone, as if she was trying to rob my life of color (not recognizing that the two of them leaving, has already turned my world black and white). Other decorative wall hangings in the living room that I hadn’t bothered to take down were gone – leaving only nails and hooks in the wall (bringing to forth the line quoted at the top from The Grinch, her daughter’s favorite Christmas book and movie).

The worst part was in our daughter’s room. Like in a movie where a parent finds out their child is gone forever, I fell to both knees, broke down and cried in front of a sad circular pile of rejected items on the floor in the empty room, that were left for me to throw out or yard sale. It was a depressing collection of things that our daughter no longer wanted, or things she no longer wanted to remember. Ribbons from awards she won, a soccer ball from her previous sports life, books she’s no longer interested in, various nick-nacs. Mixed in were a few small items that my wife had pulled out from the boxes I packed, for whatever reason she didn’t want to take these trinkets with her.

I guess I didn’t realize how much of an effect those small things would have on me — it was if she was making a point of saying that they would never be back, that there was no chance of return, something I have been thinking a lot about lately.

Vowing to concentrate not on the past or the future, I am trapped in the awful circular logic of the present. I am asking myself every minute of the day: How do I live without them? After 10 years being with the two of them, life just seems so empty. They were always here in the house, and if they weren’t, they were just a phone call or text away.

So I try to convince myself: Maybe we didn’t get along all that well the last couple years anyway, things had gotten routine, we took each other for granted, and the interests my wife and I had were seldom shared. In fact we had taken several trips separately this summer. This is something I found out while packing up her stuff – our interests were so separate, there was no question what was mine and what was hers — it almost seemed like we were living separate lives in the same house, a marriage of convenience. It could have been better, and my readers will tell me that I’ll be better off without them, and that this separation will set me up for meeting someone better down the road.

But we loved each other and that’s a tough sell with 10 years of memories, many of which were good times too. I just can’t believe she doesn’t remember those, which leads me to the next question.

Could there be something that would convince her to let us be a family again? I know it’s an extremely slim chance, and not the time to ask now; I need to let them leave and give them time by themselves to start a new life. Maybe in a few months before we sign the divorce papers, I will make one last effort, in the hopes that my ex-wife has been waiting for me to ask, even in the smallest part of her subconsciousness. But for now, I need to not cling to this hope, but rather deal with the likely reality that they are gone, and I will never see them again.